This is the second in the Doings of Dudley Doolittle series. It is set in the early 1970s, a time of political unrest.
The country was deeply divided over Vietnam, inflation was running away, and the free-love movement was smoking it up while experimenting with mind altering substances.
Jane and I had just completed our five year plan of building our 46-foot dream boat, liquidated our home, business, and everything that would not go aboard our dream boat Dursmirg.
We sailed away to warmer latitudes.
Our first winter in Florida with our sailboat, and no cars, only bicycles, we had dodged the bullet that wounded the nation. We were just beginning to live with nature, and it was great!
We found a place to dock our boat in St. Augustine, Florida. It was no frills, but it was our only option.
We bicycled everywhere: shopping, to the beach, and exploring the multitude of interesting attractions in America’s Oldest City.
1972 Florida
The Vietnam War was raging and a lot of the people we met on other boats had had enough of some of the government policies that were dividing the country and making many enemies of the United States worldwide. The Arab oil embargo was beginning to have its affects on the economy. At this time in Florida construction ground to a halt, and condominiums that were half completed were being sold off board by board, and even the fixtures that had been installed were sold to forestall foreclosure.
We met some newcomers to St. Augustine when two small sailboats came to have their boat bottoms painted at Uncle Harry’s boatyard where we were docked. Harry made them a special deal if both boats would agree to be pulled at the same time on his marine railway. Steve and Lum had a 25-foot wooden sailboat and Dudley had a 23-foot homemade molded fiberglassed plywood sailboat.
Sure enough, crafty Uncle Harry got both boats up at the same time.
Harry may have given a special price quote, but he was an expert at padding the bill. I actually saw grown men cry when Uncle Harry totaled up the yard bill on some shrimp boats he had worked on.
We got to know the interesting newcomers with their fascinating and unique stories.
Soon we found ourselves departing St. Augustine with Dudley Doolittle, a long, lanky and lean jug band musician with a cannabis grin. We were headed for Fort Lauderdale aboard his 23-foot sailboat. Dudley was relocating for carpentry work.
This was new water to Jane and me. lWe hadn’t been any further south on the Intracoastal Waterway than St. Augustine. All our trips south along the Florida coast had been offshore.
Dudley, Jane, and I took an early departure from Uncle Harry’s boatyard. We were making fantastic time the little sailboat. We had a strong tail wind that put this little boat up to its hull speed. I had no idea that Dudley couldn’t read a navigational chart when I turned the helm over to him and went below for my morning coffee. Soon we abruptly came to a halt on a sand bar. I came out on deck to find that we were at least one hundred feet from the navigable channel and solidly aground.
We tried all the usual tricks of carrying out an anchor, heeling the vessel over and attempting to sail off. We weren’t going anywhere soon, and we would have to just wait for “Mother Nature” to bring the high tide waters back to us. Then we could float away.
The strangest part of this whole ordeal was that while we sat aground we were still in full view of the downtown of the Old City even though we had an early morning departure from St. Augustine. Aground our first morning out of St. Augustine, the boat was painfully heeled over at low tide.
By afternoon we were sailing again. The wind hadn’t let up. We were making record speeds, and it appeared that we would be able to get close to Daytona Beach by dark. This was an exhilarating sail with only the jib flying. We had attained hull speed and were leaving a sizable wake behind us.
We had just passed Matanzas Inlet. I was at the helm when an extra burst of wind took the mast away faster than I could blink my eyes. The sail and half of the mast were gone! We quickly slowed and were bobbing along with the flood tide. Dudley felt totally defeated at this point and wanted to just give up and return to St. Augustine. I told Dudley that we were less than a mile from Marineland where there was a marina, and he had all of his carpenter tools aboard so we could repair the mast there and continue on. I must have been pretty persuasive because we got Dudley into action. We folded the broken mast and rigging, retrieved the sail, and stowed the lines. We used Dudley’s outboard motor to get to Marineland. We rented a slip and set out to look for the materials needed to do the repair job. While we walked the grounds of Marineland, we soon spotted just the right sized piece of wood to plug the two pieces of the aluminum mast together.
Dudley got busy planing the wood plug to “force fit” into the mast while I took over the job of milling the two metal mast pieces so that they would fit together almost like they had come from the machine shop. Besides the mast repair, we had to shorten all of the standing rigging that included the six shrouds plus the fore stay and back stay. The chain plate where the back stay had been fastened was badly rusted. We drilled a new hole in the chain plate where the metal had a little more meat. When Dudley had the plug neatly fashioned and ready to install in the two mast parts, we took the mast up to a sturdy cement wall. The three of us took the mast like a battering ram and drove the force fit plug into place. It was an impressive repair, and when it was together we again saw Dudley’s face beam with pleasure. By the next evening our diligent efforts had paid off and the mast was ready to step (install).
Just like we had an appointment that had been previously arranged, here came Steve and Lum from the boatyard in St. Augustine. They were both good sized people, and that was what we needed to stand that mast up. Steve and Lum were truly surprised that we had only gotten twenty miles in our first day, so we had to relate our incredible story to them. At the present speed we might be to Fort Lauderdale by Christmas.
Most of the rest of the trip we had to use the engine because of the lack of wind, but we had a very good time. One night we stopped on the Indian River and had a wonderful experience at a fishing camp dock. The bartender was a jovial character. When he found out that I was of Norwegian descent, he made sure that we had the time of our lives. We had cherry-stone clams raw on the half shell with hot sauce. This was our first time to ever imbibe this delicacy. Jane was skeptical at first but after one plate full, we were addicted to them.
The bartender was also the chef, and the next morning he insisted that we come in for his special $1.00 breakfast with no questions asked. He served us a more than ample breakfast. We were so stuffed we could hardly get back aboard the little boat. The fun and laughter of that evening lingers on in our memory.
These special unplanned happenings is what makes adventure traveling to special to us.
What a way to arrive in Fort Lauderdale! We seemed to be going right through the front yards of the classiest homes in town. The town was just dripping in opulence. lThe homes with huge yachts tied in their front yards and Cadillac’s and Rolls Royce’s out back made a real contrast to poor little St. Augustine. We tied up at a very nice marina in Fort Lauderdale, Pier 66, on the 17th Street causeway, where Dudley had a carpenter job waiting for him. This was as downtown as you could get. The reason the marina was named Pier 66 was because of the Phillips 66 fuel facilities.
The amount of boat traffic past the marina was unbelievable. The one bridge between the ocean inlet and us had a novel feature. The bridge opened for large vessels and sailboats but on a restricted basis. Next to the bridge tenders house was located a large clock that resembled the type used at sports fields. This one told the number of minutes remaining until the bridge would open. What I liked about this system was that after the bridge had opened it would be fifteen minutes until the next opening. But if you arrived at the bridge and the clock had counted down to zero minutes it would then open right up. At night when there was little or no boat traffic, any boat that approached the bridge would not have a wait.
During the time we were docked at the marina we did get to sight see in the neighborhood and the biggest attraction was the super-sized yacht of Aristotle and Jackie Onassis. We did check out the other marinas and discovered that they were even more palatial than the place we were at.
One big surprise was that we happened to see our friends, Don and Betty Currie going through the 17th Street bridge in their boat Ione. This is the boat that had just towed us on our boat Dursmirg from Superior, Wisconsin, to Duluth, Minnesota, when our boat was launched. We had recently visited Don and Betty in the Florida Keys when we invited them to come to St. Augustine.
Our last night on Dudley’s boat in Fort Lauderdale was interesting to say the least. We had an idea that Dudley loved to smoke up his “weed” but we didn’t have any idea that he would carry a sizable stash of the stuff. He had enough to get the authorities attention for sure. With one of his big ear-to-ear grins, he pulled out his screwdriver and unscrewed a metal flame deflector from above the galley stove and down came a big carefully wrapped bag of his clandestine stash.
While we were all asleep that night, Jane happened to roll over in her berth and put her foot on the cabin floor. She discovered that the boat was filling with water. The marine head (toilet) had inadvertently not been shut off after its last use, and water began to siphon in and slowly flood the boat. Of course, the lower the boat got in the water, the faster the water would flow in. Needless to say this event required a couple of hours of intense work to rectify.
Dudley’s mother drove down from Jacksonville to meet us and give us a ride back to St. Augustine. She obviously had plenty of money judging by the luxurious car she drove and the elegant clothes she wore.
Upon arriving back in St. Augustine, the big news was that the authorities had swooped down on Harry’s Boat Yard and made a “drug bust.” They missed the one big haul they could have made on Dudley’s boat, but they did find a potted marijuana plant on Steve and Lum’s boat, for which they were fined $100.00. Steve and Lum were not in the business but occasionally smoked a joint. They preferred to grow their own. It was healthier and free of pesticides! The Sheriff’s Department got a bust, and they made news!
We continue our adventures in our book Sailing the Sea Islands: Travels of Dursmirg.
If you are afraid of getting wet, you shouldn’t go sailing, bicycling, or be a plumber.
Story 1: The Cowboy Wanna Be
Story 3; Keg of Beer St. Augustine
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